Wales-based Academy of Robotics aims at creating autonomous pods to deliver goods in city suburbs. In the picture, a concept of their vehicle Kar-Go (via Wickerman4 )

Welsh company Academy of Robotics has gathered £292,930 in crowdfunding to develop its self-driving vehicle Kar-Go.

The company, based in Aberystwyth, has conceived an AI-powered pod that would use a blend of machine vision, sensors and offline map analysis to autonomously deliver packages in residential areas.

Founded in 2015 by William Sachiti, Academy of Robotics got its first tranche of funding—a £10,000 grant— from the University of Aberystwyth. Now, according to UK Tech News, the startup has raised just after £300,000 (its intended target) on crowdfunding platform Crowdcube— with 268 people investing in exchange for 15.38% equity.

Academy of Robotics CEO Sachiti says that an unnamed technology corporation had pledged to invest into the project if the company managed to collect at least £250,000.

The company is also reportedly expecting to close a Series A funding round in 2018. All the funding will go into building the first prototype vehicles.

“These vehicles will be used for on-the-road trials with retailers in 2018 and the rest of the money will be used to create a support structure around those live trials,” Sachiti said in a statement.

“Kar-Go will change the way the world sends and receive packages, 2018 will be an exciting year and we can’t wait to get started,” he concluded.